Reflecting on the Shame of College Sports

 The NCAA's mission statements puts an equal emphasis on excelling in athletes and academics with a high level of integrity and sportsmanship. In a perfect world, the NCAA would provide a fair and safe playing field for amateur athletes across the United States to both play the sport they love and get an education while doing so. In reaching this goal the NCAA would provide coaches, trainers, facilities, and what not to make this vision possible. Unfortunately, as we have seen throughout the years, this is not always the case. Within collegiate sport, especially the NCAA the large amount of money have added extra pressure on both the organization and its amateur athletes. In doing so, they have strayed form their core values creating a very different reality.

While the NCAA has stayed true to the amateur aspect of their athletes, this is not always in the athletes best interest. Athletics provide schools, especially those in the Big Five conference, with insane sums of cash. While the athletes do benefit from the money in terms of training facilities, equipment and travel, many feel as if they are not seen as exceptional athletes by the NCAA, but more so as cheap labor. In " Schooled : The Price of College Sports" Martin and Finkel bring light to this issue, is it fair to paying the athletes who generate all the revenue for schools? While it is hard to determine a hard dollar amount for how much time and effort the athletes put in to better themselves, and ultimately their university team, athletes are missing out on the billions of dollars they bring into the NCAA on a yearly basis. And, this is not necessarily in the athletes best interests.

At UNC, Athletes were put into specialized majors, to guarantee all top athletes would be academically eligible to compete in the NCAA. Not only is the NCAA going against their mission statement to help their athletes excel academically, they are ultimately hurting them in the long run, by inhibiting their academic growth, and allowing themselves to cheat in order to succeed. In a different aspect, many NCAA athletes do not have enough money to buy themselves the amount of food it takes to nourish the body at that level of an intense workout. However, the NCAA commissioner is sitting on a multi-million dollar salary, made up of the money these hungry athletes have earned for him. The Frontline Documentary " Money in March Madness," further emphasizes this point. And frankly, it is a little embarrassing for the NCAA. While it makes sense for athletes at small school such as Pacific to not get paid, due to the non-existent athletic revenue we generate at an organization, big schools that make millions off of their athletes still manage to short them. Many athletes at these big schools not only do not have enough to eat, but their families are unable to watch them participate in the biggest collegiate basketball event of the year: March Madness. In an event that generates billions for the NCAA, you would think an organization dedicated to the well being of student athletes could pitch in a few thousands dollars to at least allow the players families to join in on the festivities.

While I do think the NCAA provides a lot of opportunity for athletes to grow and develop both in competition and in the classroom, there is clearly a lot of room for improvement. The NCAA makes a lot of claims -- they are a non profit organization, dedicated to bettering the lives of and allowing their student athletes to succeed, and it's about damn time they start acting like it.






References

"NCAA Core Values." NCAA Home Page. N.p., 28 Jan. 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2015

Schooled: The Price of College Sports. Dir. Trevor Martin and Ross Finkel. Perf. Taylor Branch and Jay Bilas and Kevin Anderson. 2013

Frontline: Money in March Madness. Frontline. March 29, 2011.